Tuesday, June 2, 2009

A little story of awesome customer service

In the meatspace, I'm a customer service drone. I've done it in various roles since 2004 and if Malcolm Gladwell needs an example of someone who's done 10,000 hours in a role for a sequel to Outliers, he can call me. So I know what good customer service is all about.

Recently, one of my DS Lites developed a crack. It started small and ended up massive, to the point where I could see the innards of the hinge when opening it. I decided a week ago Monday to call Nintendo about it.

The timeline:

Tuesday: Call Nintendo, get instructions for sending the package in. They're paying for return shipping, since it's under warranty because I registered the thing for Club Nintendo.

Wednesday: About 6:00 my time, drop the package off at the shipper.

Saturday: Check the tracking, it's about to arrive.

Monday: Package arrives at Nintendo. They look at it, determine that the DS is boned, and...

Tuesday: I get a Twitter message that there's a package waiting for me at home. I get home... and it's a new DS Lite. Same color, intact hinge and everything.

They freaking OVERNIGHTED the replacement.

It's not going to take stuff like a 2D Mario on the Wii for me to keep getting Nintendo products - it's the awesome customer service.